Next hurdle jumped

Big news today.

We heard from Emma Sweeney, the US literary agent in New York who has been reading the manuscript of Paradise. She was on holiday last week in Maine. What was she doing in Maine, you might ask? (Well, you might.) I’ll tell you: apparently she was reading my book, and apparently she liked it. Bruce has written from London telling me that she is very enthusiastic about the novel and is looking forward to representing me.

This is, needless to say, a huge relief.

As regular readers will know, I was worried about whether or not Bruce would like the book, but in some ways getting a US agent on board was going to be an even bigger struggle – since, you know, it’s set in America, an’ all. Anyway, it seems as if Emma gets the book and what I was trying to accomplish, which is in itself very gratifying. It will be interesting to see how we go from here. Bruce is proposing an auction for the UK rights and has his eyes on various of the big UK publishers. We may wait and see how it fares in the US first.

Christina and I went out for lunch to celebrate and cast most of the film while we were waiting for our food to arrive. High spirits. Right now I’m very pleased, although I do have to keep reminding myself that we haven’t sold a thing yet.